I hate that ex shoryu doesnt fully connect through fireballs sometimes, I still get screwed by it and am dumbfounded when it misses… My biggest struggle is defense, against some characters I just can’t protect my air space , especially ones that can change their air trajectory. That and constant safe jump pressure. I don’t think she is really strong here, could just be me though. Usually makes me switch to my more experienced Dee jay

That’s sort of the point of her design; if she had great defense in addition to the massive damage and stun she’d pretty busted. The important thing is to remember all of the tools you have available; CR.HP will lose to people using things that change their jump arc, but that extra time they have to spend in the air means whatever they’re doing will probably get smashed by NJ.MP.

ex.tatsu generally doesn’t whiff as bad as ex shou. Also, you don’t often use tatsu to punish fireball, whereas ex shouken looks tailor made to beat fireballs. When you want it, tatsu generally gives you results while shouken basically never does (unless you’re close enough for cr.mk, which is generally a range players don’t throw as much fireballs, and your cr.mk is the better threat). ex shouken can only really be a hail mary wakeup option, or a risky frame trap that leads to damage (for 3 meter), when it could be a fantastic part of Sakura’s main game plan (punish bad fireballs). Ex tatsu is currently a “get in your face” free card or a good combo extender, both of which it does very well. It can sometimes punish things, which is when it could start whiffing, but that isn’t its main purpose (at least imo).

Plus, a whiffed ex tatsu is +2 on block, while whiffed shouken equals full punish.

Simply put, I don’t have much experiences where a bad ex tatsu ruined me too bad, while I vividly remember reacting to fireball and losing because of it.

I find EX tatsu to be particularly useful against Ryu/E.Ryu when your opponent is playing a heavy fireball/cr.MK game because it goes over both of those options if you get a read, and the drop isn’t so bad if all they do is block after the drop (as you said you’re at frame advantage, can frametrap/throw, etc.) but the thing is that in my experience people just blocking the EX tatsu isn’t always what happens - I’ve lost against quite a few Ryu/E.Ryu players that have won because of my EX tatsu over a fireball only hitting with the first hit, and them then getting a DP FADC’d into ultra/combo/their own wakeup pressure. Shou is easier to punish because you can just wait for it to end, but even without meter you can pretty reliably DP her out of tatsu it if it drops (and if it doesn’t you were eating the move anyway, so nothing lost for trying).

I agree that EX Shou is by far the greater concern, I just don’t see why people only complain about the one move when ideally capcom would fix both.

I find ex.sho really useful against Poison because of the way the hurtbox on her fireballs are, and Poison players are usually content to spam fireball from any range like they’re unbeatable. You can literally hold forward vs her and react to the fireball startup with ex.sho from a pretty decent range, similar to how gief uses ex.green hand. But in general the move is fucking awful at what it does, I’ve had Vega players meaty me with a point blank cr.mp when I wake up ex.sho and the 2nd rep gets blocked FROM POINT BLANK RANGE.

It DEFINITELY should have some sort of vacuum effect or something to guarantee full hits if the first rep connects, and that’s not even going into the fact that it needs 3 bars to be made safe, is useless against airborne opponents AND is 12f startup so a lot characters can safely meaty you with an OS behind it to practically shut down your entire wakeup.

In a perfect world (realistically) it’d be ~10f startup with the guaranteed full hits but I seriously doubt there will be any more changes to the game at this point, it’s a shame it didn’t get some sort of buff when Ultra/1.04 dropped seeing as how good few characters got decent buffs to their reversals (e.g. Gouken, Cody, Juri, Fuerte, Dee Jay, Ibuki, Abel), anyway it’s definitely not useless and it converts into MAJOR damage if you land it but i’m still gonna curse Capcom every time it drops that 2nd rep.

Overall, she is still very good, her damage output with cr MK make her never a bottom tier. Always get a comeback chance.

But fighting Ryu is quite hard nowadays. Ryu fireball is so fast that if you absorb the fireball with SA, you have to retreat. If you go for dash forward, you will get hit by another fireball. While at that distance, you have to read for an ex tatsu/h. tatsu, but sometimes the 3rd hit of H. Tatsu will WHIFF, and Ryu get a free punish afterward.
If you react to the fireball with EX DP, unluckily your second part of the DP will be blocked, no matter what.

I’ll see the H. Tatsu/Ex DP whiff are design fault which shall be properly fixed.

IMO fixing Ex DP will be very sufficient to make her more solid (but not OP), either add a vacuum on first part, or lengthen the hitbox of the second part will do the trick.

And it will be happy to see the Omega Tatsu followup kick can be added too, which can result a better damage output when you read a fireball, instead of just 60 damage